Hi Maria,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were self-direction, achievement, and benevolence.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.
You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and verbal.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to healthy lifestyle .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said wake up early .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said fulfilled .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said snoozing alarm .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: when thinking of snoozing my alarm, then countdown 3,2,1 and stand up .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in reading .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt failure when receiving critical feedback, and failure when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being everything .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to .
In one word, you said it made you feel grateful .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
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| interest is an emotion |
| personality changes depending on your state |
| if then |
| flow meets skill level |
| to ask for advice and feedback, positive and negative |
| fail better |
| dont trust willpower, focus on situation |
| gritty people lean on more people |
| there is a way to be giver without giving too much |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Hannah Moskowitz |
| Maria is a kind and reflective teammate. When we have group discussions Maria always seems to relate the question at hand to her relationships with her family, her friends, and herself. She makes me think about what I want to get out of my relationships with others.
I really admired Maria's discovery project. She seemed to know that she wanted to focus on meditation from the first few weeks of class. I thought it was particularly warming to see that she was able to create a community around her discovery project, inspiring her friends and family to meditate every week with her. |
| Beverly Feng |
| Clara’s thoughtfulness and relaxed demeanor was a great addition to our group this semester. Through our conversations, I’ve learned that she is a kind and caring person to her friends and family. The personal experiences that she shared with us during discussions were always insightful and relatable. It was a pleasure getting to know Clara! |
| Valeria Celi Damis |
| Clara, I am so happy to have taken GRIT lab and have been placed in the same group as you. I have known you since freshman year and it has been really exciting to see you grow! I really appreciate how you are very in tune with your needs and values, and as an econ major, you brought a different perspective to all our group conversations for many different reasons. Your grit and willingness to navigate challenges with a relaxed attitude made all our group debriefs very enjoyable. Your openness, genuine nature, and thoughtful communication style create an environment where conversations are deepened and enriched. Your considerate and kind personality, coupled with your passion for giving back to others, make you an invaluable member of our team. Overall, your presence elevates our group dynamics, and we are fortunate to work alongside someone who is not only well-prepared but also continuously eager to learn and contribute meaningfully to our shared goals.
Your presentation on mindfulness was very interesting and I truly enjoyed the personal experiences you shared throughout your process. I was inspired by the fact that you embarked on this project with your mum, and it made me look forward to being back home, spending time with my own mum, and connecting over shared passions. I feel like your project truly showed me how a connection can be strengthened through a shared activity. I also liked the balance you found from different sources, such as a meditation map, a mentor, and just your habit formation. Thanks for sharing with us your inspiration to embark on this journey and connecting to our overall goals, while seeking to understand the positive impact that small habits like meditation could bring. I genuinely hope you continue to share your insights and encourage others on their mindfulness journeys!
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We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.